Aprende español sobre la guerra contra las drogas aquí.
by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher
June 30, 2024
Welcome to Spanish Drug War 101, where we will be learning the Spanish language while trashing the Drug War in all 18 of its verb tenses. We will start our lessons today, appropriately enough, with the verb "odiar," the Spanish word for "hate," so that we can easily communicate our contempt for the counterproductive policy of prohibition when we're down south. Speaking of which, get those field trip forms signed for our upcoming flight to San Jose del Pacifico in Oaxaca, Mexcio. We will be going down there this fall to learn about the time-honored Zapotec practice of ingesting mushrooms for medicinal and psycho-spiritual purposes.
Don't forget to click the audio button above to hear the sample sentences for all 18 of the possible Spanish conjugations of the verb "odiar," to hate. And stay tuned for more Drug War Spanish in the weeks to come!
Ten Tweets
against the hateful war on US
I think many scientists are so used to ignoring "drugs" that they don't even realize they're doing it. Yet almost all books about consciousness and depression (etc.) are nonsense these days because they ignore what drugs could tell us about those topics.
That's another problem with "following the science." Science downplays personal testimony as subjective. But psychoactive experiences are all ABOUT subjectivity. With such drugs, users are not widgets susceptible to the one-size-fits-all pills of reductionism.
The formula is easy: pick a substance that folks are predisposed to hate anyway, then keep hounding the public with stories about tragedies somehow related to that substance. Show it ruining lives in movies and on TV. Don't lie. Just keep showing all the negatives.
The Drug War is a religion. The "addict" is a sinner who has to come home to the true faith of Christian Science. In reality, neither physical nor psychological addiction need be a problem if all drugs were legal and we used them creatively to counter problematic use.
Don't the Oregon prohibitionists realize that all the thousands of deaths from opiates is so much blood on their hands?
Until we legalize ALL psychoactive drugs, there will be no such thing as an addiction expert. In the meantime, it's insulting to be told by neuroscience that I'm an addictive type. It's pathologizing my just indignation at psychiatry's niggardly pharmacopoeia.
If politicians wanted to outlaw coffee, a bunch of Kevin Sabets would come forward and start writing books designed to scare us off the drink by cherry-picking negative facts from scientific studies.
Drug warriors aren't just deciding for us about drugs. They're telling us that we no longer need Coleridge poems, Lovecraft stories, Robin Williams, Sherlock Holmes, or the soma-inspired Hindu religion.
All drugs have positive uses. It's absurd to prohibit using them because one demographic might misuse them.
Mad in America publishes stories of folks who are disillusioned with antidepressants, but they won't publish mine, because I find mushrooms useful. They only want stories about cold turkey and jogging, or nutrition, or meditation.
I think many scientists are so used to ignoring "drugs" that they don't even realize they're doing it. Yet almost all books about consciousness and depression (etc.) are nonsense these days because they ignore what drugs could tell us about those topics.
